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snydeq writes "Enterprise licensing for Windows 7 could cause major headaches and add more cost to the Windows 7 migration effort, InfoWorld reports. Under the proposed license, businesses that purchase PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed within six months of the Oct. 23 launch date will be able to downgrade those systems to XP, and later upgrade back to Windows 7 when ready to migrate users. PCs bought after April 22, 2010, however, can only be downgraded to Vista — no help for XP-based organizations, which would be wise to wait 12 to 18 months before adopting Windows 7, so that they can test hardware and software compatibility and ensure their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. XP shops that chose not to install Vista will have to either rush their migration process or spend extra to enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance program, which allows them to install any OS version — for about $90 per year per PC."

From TFA: "Web apps tuned to Internet Explorer 6, which Microsoft has essentially orphaned. Windows 7 will ship with IE8, which has a compatibility mode for IE7, but not for IE6. And if IT retains IE7 in Windows 7, Silver notes that IE7 lacks an IE6 compatibility mode. So IT must rework its IE6-dependent Web apps or use XP mode to run IE6. Both are hassles."

When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old, there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' dick. "Support of legacy software has made Windows a bloated piece of shit. Apple's so smart."

When Microsoft makes a similar change people whine about all the hassles they'll have to go through.

When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old, there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' ****. "Support of legacy software has made Windows a bloated piece of shit. Apple's so smart."

When Microsoft makes a similar change people whine about all the hassles they'll have to go through.

As a personal user I wouldn't mind if Microsoft decided to pull an Apple and cut off support for all of their legacy stuff. I don't really use much legacy software anymore, and am just about done with PC gaming. If it would streamline the OS and remove some bugs, I'm all for it and would applaud them instead of criticize.

However I can see why businesses aren't happy: many rely on old custom legacy systems. They have websites setup for IE 6, rely on legacy era (ie DOS) applications for obscure equipment, some Sales admin/entry software that can only work on certain environments, etc. And hardware, they don't just have to worry about workstations but external devices (like scales, sensors, lab equipment, etc) that might only work with a DOS-based program through an old COM port.

In short, businesses have a LOT of specialized software that they need to keep running and cannot replace and thus want things to stay status-quo, and I can't really blame them. If upgrading their PCs and OS means spending hundreds of thousands (if not millions) on new software and hardware, you can imagine that they'd like to sit just where they are.

That's what kills me about the legacy apps people always bring up. Why do ---I--- need legacy code for your disgustingly old database software (or insert another example)? I don't! Rebuild the operating system from the ground up, and let legacy users stay on that software. For the rest of us that need a modern system, bring out Windows Awesome or we'll just continue looking for other options.

because nobody really cares about you. You don't buy a copy of Windows on Select agreement, or Software Assurance - ie you don't pay Stevie every year to run the same software, or in the case where you get tp upgrade to the latest version, *have* to upgrade whether you want to or not.

See, you don't want to run anything but the latest stuff, but you don't spend like those companies do, and they;re the ones who buy the "enterprise" software that still needs XP, or NT4, or DOS. Selling to you is just a sideline to Microsoft's real business.

And last I looked, you weren't the marketplace for Biztalk, Exchange and all the other Really Expensive server software MS gets to sell to the companies that pay for Windows on their yearly licences.

Businesses want to pay people to take care of such things because they have been conditioned to believe that it isn't cost effective to do it in house.

This is the problem with MBA's making IT decisions. This gets even worse when they start to throw around buzzwords like "cloud computing" when they don't actually understand what it means let alone the underlying technology (or risks/benefits of such technology). My work just started looking at outsourcing server infrastructure, IT

Yeah, The Internet is a fucking hypocrite. It's almost like it's an amalgamation of a huge number of people with a huge number of differing opinions instead of a single entity. Doesn't it know it must be internally consistent, ideologically!?

Yeah, The Internet is a fucking hypocrite. It's almost like it's an amalgamation of a huge number of people with a huge number of differing opinions instead of a single entity. Doesn't it know it must be internally consistent, ideologically!?

While everyone does hate on MS around here there is one major difference. In general when Apple went to OS X (and with most subsequent upgrades) it was generally viewed as a better system but when MS went to Vista it was viewed as worse. I'm not saying you don't have a point about people hating on MS just to hate but the comparison is a bit apples and oranges.

I don't know, I stay away from purchasing TVs and other electronics because of reviews I read and personal experiences from other people's accounts.

People going from mac to windows are going to have the same problems that people going from windows to Linux usually do. Those problems are that it isn't the old OS they were using and things are done differently within it. If having to relearn things prevents a lot of Linux converts from staying with Linux, then I can't fault someone who doesn't want to do the

Uuhhh...because XP after SP2 was actually good, while Vista sucked the big wet titty? The stupidest mistake in the history of MSFT "WTF were they thinking?" mistakes had to be fucking up the Vista driver model so XP drivers wouldn't run. Do you have ANY idea how many millions of drivers there were for XP? How many of those companies couldn't care less about writing a Vista driver for anything more than a year old? That was a major fuck up, which was done for an equally boneheaded [wikipedia.org] reason, that ended up helpi

I think people need to mind their own business. If I want to run a network of XP and 2000 computers in my house, it's my issue. I have thousands of programs that run fine on these systems and I'll be damned if I spend any more money because some asshole thinks I should upgrade. One of my kids even runs a windows 98 box because of old games. I have a hardware firewall and watch the network.

I hate Microsoft for their business practices, but I use their software all the time. I still use Office 97, Simply ac

What did Microsoft do?. Try running 32 bit applications on Win64 and see how well that works. Some don't. Why do you even have to buy Win64 as a separate product? Poor planning or greed?

Have you ever even tried to use an x64 windows version? None of what you're talking about exists. 32-bit apps run fine in x64 windows. This is being posted from Vista x64 Business on an HP Compaq 8710w, using 32-bit opera. Works just fine.

MS Office is 32-bit, works just fine. I run VS2008, Oracle Enterprise x86, Eclipse, Tomcat, Apache, MySQL, Rails/Mongrel, and a million other 32-bit apps, they all work fine.

In addition, I have a dozen win2003 x64 servers in the field (they're still a minority) that work just fine with 32-bit apps. Most of them run IIS in 32-bit mode because some app they require includes only 32-bit components.

I think someone may have given you bad information about x64 windows that you took for gospel.

And generally, you dont have to buy x64 windows as a separate product. Most corporate targeted systems that support x64 (like my hp laptop) shipped with both x86 and x64 Vista discs, and driver discs for both. Every server I've ever bought that came with an MS operating system also had that.

I really don't get it...how will Microsoft even know you downgraded to XP if you just boot the machine up for the first time using a WinXP install CD, and then later reinstall Windows 7 with the OS disk (you do insist on OS install disks being shipped with your new PCs, right?) at a later date? They would only be activating the Windows 7 installation one time, and MS would likely never know or care.

In a company environment you even install from a deployment server instead so not even a CD is needed. And often that installation is done without even touching the preinstalled OS.

But lately there have been hardware that required extra drivers to be added to the XP installation so a plain vanilla CD wouldn't work, it has to be tweaked. And if M$ gots their way the hardware manufacturers will soon drop XP supported drivers on their new hardware just to force people to go to Vista or Win 7.

They are closing the only way people currently have to purchase a brand new OEM license of Windows XP. The only way to install XP on any computer you don't currently have licensed is to purchase an incredibly expensive software assurance plan from Microsoft. SA isn't always a bad thing, but considering most people have been using the same OS for 7-8 years and have no intention of changing...It's not a good deal to get SA. If you bought XP in 2002, purchased the open license for $200 (guesstimate), and then paid the $66 a year for SA (assumes SA at 1/3rd price of the product)...You would have paid $662 for what you could have gotten for $200. SA only makes sense if you upgrade every 3 years or less, but the truth is, even if your new OS didn't suck, businesses don't like massive change, and changing OS version is exactly that, massive change.

Why does the phrase "Lost Generation" keep coming to mind? Microsoft is setting themselves up to fail (again). Skip over Vista, skip over Win 7.0, eventually the learning curve from jumping from XP to Win 7 SP1 becomes no worse than jumping from XP to Ubuntu. Me, I swore that Win2K would be my last Microsoft OS, and it was. I'll dabble with supporting friends and relatives XP machines, because it's similar enough to 2K. I tried to configure a cow-orkers laptop a few times, now I just routinely refuse.

Most businesses have volume license XP keys. They do not buy XP at all. Well, they sort of do pay. They pay a yearly subscription to use those volume keys. Will all those XP keys stop working? Maybe. If microsoft does that, they will be inviting those companies to go to an OS other then one from microsoft. I think those enterprise volume keys will still work.

Yep. I don't want to switch to Windows 7. XP works just fine for Office apps, Firefox, Adobe reader, winzip a couple of proprietary apps and....that's it. The Devil's biggest trick was convincing the world that OS's need to be regularly upgraded to something very very different.

Would be happy to pay a reasonable sum for patches (done properly mind you, no larking about until Tuesday to get critical vulnerabilities out of the way), but having to either accept the costs of a mixed OS environment, or a large migration project for no benefit whatsoever, or pay extra for an old OS which is *still* supported really pisses me the fuck off.

Sigh, I guess this is the price we all pay for being reliant on a company which I suspect is past it's peak.

(On the subject of things that piss me the fuck off, I also hate it when you have to make an effort to decode marketing spiel to work out what a product does - I'm looking at you, VMWare.)

Sigh, I guess this is the price we all pay for being reliant on a company which I suspect is past it's peak.

What?

Microsoft is doing exactly what any other software company in their position has done, and would do. You have GenericSoftware 3.0. Then, GenericSoftware 4.0 is released. You either you have to deal with a mixed software environment, or you have to upgrade everyone to GenericSoftware 4.0. How is what Microsoft's doing different from what every other company is doing?

And don't tell me open-source doesn't have this problem. Windows XP was released in 2001. If you asked for support and patches for, say, Mozilla Phoenix 0.3 (released 2002), you'd get laughed out of pretty much everywhere. And if you actually cared about using open-source, you'd be using Linux and you wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

And it's not compatibility, either: Windows 7 is coming with Windows XP Mode, which will give you all the IE6 you'll need for your buggy ActiveX webapps.

So tell me: What's wrong with what Microsoft is doing with Windows XP?

"If you asked for support and patches for, say, Mozilla Phoenix 0.3 (released 2002), you'd get laughed out of pretty much everywhere"

or more likely be pointed to the repository where you can get it, for free. Oh, and if you need a specific patch and could move to the newest branch, you could hire someone to patch it. I can't think of a situation where that could possible happen, but if it did you have options.

I want to tell you all the reasons why linux is perfect, but I'm going to have to keep this brief, since I'm still recovering from a kernal update that went horribly wrong. but once I get my wifi working again, I can fix my no sound in flash issues. Hopefully, that wont break my DVD playback abilities this time, which i finally got to work, despite the screen saver still popping up after being turned off...

but, once I get all that out of the way, you can expect a long list of reasons why linux is indeed ready for the desktop.

I want to tell you all the reasons why windows is perfect, but I'm going to have to keep this brief, since I'm still recovering from a windows update that went horribly wrong. but once I track down the update failed error code I can start re-adding my printer and network definitions, then I can start looking at cleaning out my corrupted registry and removing these visues I keep getting. Hopefully, that wont break my DVD playback abilities this time, which i finally got to work, despite the screen saver still popping up after being turned off...

but, once I get all that out of the way, you can expect a long list of reasons why windows is indeed ready for the desktop, unlike linux, which has no END of problems!

If we ever hit the magical Year of the Linux Desktop, where ordinary users suddenly switch to Linux in droves, it'll be due to Linux's strengths, not Microsoft's mistakes. Proclaiming that the Linux Revolution is upon us every time Microsoft slips up will only make you look silly.

On a side note, the year of the Linux desktop was about 3 years ago for me.

Remember that, in the consumer and small-to-medium-sized business market, Microsoft doesn't provide any end-user support beyond patches; it's the manufacturers' responsibility. I'm sure Dell isn't thrilled about supporting WinXP for years to come, but I'd bet that if they could just keep rolling out XP machines to the customers that want them, they'd be happy to continue to support them. OEMs can't be happy about having to dodge all these obstacles Microsoft puts in their way either.

Is this number right? For $90/yr/pc, I can install any MSFT operating system?

Why isn't this program publicized? I am a small business and I have to tell you...the entire Windows licensing system is very very difficult to navigate. And I am 100% certain that is "by design". The more confused they can make me, the more money they can extract out of me and my company (or so they think).

In actual practice, I don't mind spending money where needed and $90/yr/pc seems about fair for a Windows OS.

Bonus points if someone can point me to a vendor who will sell it to me.

M$ has finally came clean and declare that their users don't 'own' a piece of software, or for that matter, a perpetual license on a per system basis. Instead it's a rental license that must be renewed yearly. Failure to do so will result in deactivation and data loss.

Exactly. Consumers need to understand what this licensing means and why Linux, OS X, and older versions of Windows (2000-XP) are a better investment than Vista/Windows 7 licensing.

I still use W2K at home. XP is literally a patch-work and I am tired of the reboots, so I have mostly abandoned it. Vista is slow, lacks drivers, and drops support for hardware that is perfectly good in W2K-XP. Windows 7 is an improvement -- although Windows Explorer in RC1 is annoyingly slow and reason enough for me to abandon Windows 7.

Can anyone explain what the FUCK happened to slashdot to make comments unreadable, and how to fix it? There are unremovable grey horizontal and vertical bars and pill icons everywhere. OMGPONIES was supposed to be a joke, and now they've made it reality.

On the other hand, if you don't have mod points, go up to the top of the comments where there are three drop down menu boxes for threshold and 2 other things and two buttons--reply and change--and without changing anything, click the change button.

Don't know why that works , either, but it seems to.

Thanks for forcing me to find a fix for something that's been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks now.

If it is a large company $90/yr/pc is an outrageous price. You would be spending more for the operating system than the PC, considering most companies get a fairly good discount when buying large quantities of PCs.

Did you actually read what's written...MSDN is for testing and dev only.
hence the:
"Software testers or IT professionals who need to set up test labs with Microsoft operating systems, but do not need additional products.
Example: Test or IT staff at a video card manufacturer needs to set up a lab for testing drivers on multiple versions of Windows."
If you install MSDN OS in your shop in production and MS knocks on your door...you'll find yourself in court in a snap of a finger....it happened to us last year

Are the penalty fees still the same? last I heard it was the cost of the license with no discounts + (3*the cost of the license with no discounts) per machine. Say the license was $100 (to make the math easy) it would be $400 per machine. That can add up fast if you are a medium or large shop.

We're on XP...They are thinking of going Vista because of the 1 on 1 MS support we have.Most techs here are well against any move away from XP...Vista II or 7 depending what your take is is not an option.We want out of the M$ revenue tree...Just code something that works and we'll pay for the patches/upgrades.Stop trying to sell us new stuff that just takes up more CPU cycles for no good reason.This industry is going nowhere fast.

We're on XP...
They are thinking of going Vista because of the 1 on 1 MS support we have.
Most techs here are well against any move away from XP...
Vista II or 7 depending what your take is is not an option.
We want out of the M$ revenue tree...
Just code something that works and we'll pay for the patches/upgrades.
Stop trying to sell us new stuff that just takes up more CPU cycles for no good reason.
This industry is going nowhere fast.

It's worth wondering if it isn't cheaper over the medium and long term to just start upgrading to Windows 7 in phases as soon as it comes out. First to users that have shown the least need for hand-holding, then at an ever faster pace to users in ascending order of needyness. The XP/Vista options do not look cheaper or any more attractive.

Anecdotal observation time. I just built a new desktop and am planning on using it as a testbed. I have a homebrew distro of XP called XP 64-bit Ultimate which is intended to be a current, patched, up-to-date version of XP so you're not stuck downloading several hundred megs of patches and cruft when you do a new install. I also have Ubuntu 9.04 and the beta for Windows 7.

Ubuntu worked right out of the box, decent default viddy drivers, network card detected. Sound isn't working but I hadn't expected any of it to work since this is a newish motherboard with everything integrated so that's much better than I expected. XP had a worse default viddy driver and no networking. Of course, I managed to kill Ubuntu trying to get the full ATI drivers working but that's probably just a silly mistake made overlooking something.

Now I know that people will say "n00b, you can slipstream stuff into your custom build of xp your such a linux fanboy" etc etc but what's nice about Ubuntu is you don't have to dick with any of that stuff. Distros release very frequently and you can burn a new CD whenever you want. You can't even cheat with Windows and borrow someone's more recent CD because your legally-purchased key won't likely be compatible.

This is a roundabout way of saying that for all the unfamiliar quirks and different ways of doing things, open source is so much nicer to work with simply due to the lack of the licensing model.

Okay, so to get this straight:
linux installed fine, but without working sound. You killed your linux installation through attempting to update video drivers.
windows installed fine, but without working LAN drivers. I am assuming you corrected this and installed proper ATI drivers without crashing your system.

Objectively, how is your Linux experience any better than Windows? It sounds like overall, it was worse (assuming you had a need to upgrade to ATI drivers. ). I'm not saying that linux can't be easily installed and working, obviously that is not true. However, your anecdotal experience -- if anything --- seems to say you should stay with Windows.

The problem is that his only alternative is to install an old version of XP and wait an eternity while it updates, then spend an age hunting around for all the drivers and then spend lots more time installing those. Imagine the pain of having to reinstall XP from an original pre-SP1 copy.

Are we done comparing the latest-and-greatest version of an operating system to a 7-year-old model?

'For my next trick, I'll compare the state of Ubuntu circa 2002 to Windows 7.

Very good point. I could go through the upgrade treadmill from Ubuntu 2002 (what version was that, 3? Horribly old). But if I don't want to do that, I can download the latest edition, no problem. If I bought a legal copy of XP back when it first shipped, I have absolutely no recourse towards getting a more recent version of the media for reinstalls. If I want to get up to SP3 with all the bells and whistles, I'm going to be downloading what, a gig or two worth of data? There's absolutely no legal resource f

The release candidate will have been available for 11 months come april of next year, which is plenty of time to test hardware. Given that 7 is primarily an upgrade to Vista applications and drivers will not have issues, at least not unknown ones.

Vista can add security and stability to some environments when installed correctly. The same will be true with Windows 7 at final release, and will do so without as many slowdowns that Vista brings.

Just like it's suboptimal to run very old hardware with new operating systems, it's also suboptimal to run new hardware with an old system. Device vendors often fail to provide adequate drivers for outdated operating systems, and like it or not the base hardware in today's systems is completely different than it was back when XP was new.

I recently tried out W7 RC for the first time, and put fallout 3 on there while I was at it. It's known as a glitchy game, but it ran OK.

Then, after about a day of play, the system ran the automatic update while I was playing. No problem. The following day when I tried to play, the game would randomly freeze every 5-10 minutes of play. I rolled the system back, systematically (damn nice, and absolutely necessary, feature, what with the likelihood that updates =will= break things) u

"A method of automatically loading a weapon for repeatedly and regularly firing at one's foot without breaking the rythm".

Microsoft has in the last couple of years:

- Released THE most hated OS since WinMe

- Released a confusing myriad of versions of their latest OS' which seek to differentiate by feature set, ultimately pissing off any customer who buys or is forced by a hardware manufacturer to buy an inferior version of the OS only to find that they must upgrade to get important functionality enabled

- Replaced their Office interface with that goddawful ever changing ribbon which certain geeks continue to defend despite it completely ruining productivity, and now they're incorporating it into every damn program they can

- Fired their Aces game development team ending a long running franchise in flight simulation

- Put just about everyone off side with their nutty Windows Genuine campaign

Your comment is timely because my girl friend (I know, I must be lying) just came to me yesterday and started bitching about how much she hates Office 2007 and how doing common tasks has been completely changed. First she started ranting about not being able to do a simple undo, and was only able to undo after her co-worker told her about Ctrl+Z (she never found the menu command for undo). Then she went on a long tirade about how now instead of going to the file menu, she has to use the "Disk icon".

I'll bet 100 mod points that Windows XP will be available at least a year after Windows 7 release. Microsoft barks a loud bark, but in the end, they tend to buckle under pressure from their biggest supporters.

This "Assurance" is bullshit. XP WILL die eventually, and it will be due to the hardware vendors not writing drivers anymore, not because Microsoft has "assured" you by taking your money. It's already getting difficult to find XP driver support for new hardware out there TODAY, much less 12 - 24 months from now when businesses will still be looking to run XP.

They're just testing how much more abuse they can heap on their customers before those customers start leaving in droves. It really is quite consistent with their business strategies. They'll keep pushing until a lot of customers start looking elsewhere then they'll backpedal to just before that point and dial it in there. They're experts of having things just good enough and just usable enough that people don't go looking elsewhere.

If you've been following their behavior for a while, it's pretty clear what they're up to. Watch for an increasingly bizarre set of announcements in the coming months, and at least one major backpedal.

You mean if i'm using an 8 year old operating system and a 7 year old browser I may have some issues upgrading to the latest and greatest If i feel like formatting several times and have no idea what XP mode is?

Seriously- the amount of backwards compatibility microsoft gives is ridiculous. Microsoft bends over backwards to provide backwards compatibility- including installing a full copy of an older operating system in their new one. If you cant find some solution that works for you- are aren't actually looking.

I work in a public school district and our flavor of SOftware Assurance costs much less than $90/PC - closer to $40/PC including a healthy selection of MS software (Office 2003/2007, the various shrinkwrap applications students use, etc.).

We save almost $150-200 per PC by not buying an OS pre-installed, and our typical hardware lasts about 5 years in the hands of our students, so the cost is essentially a wash (5x$40 = $200, which is aprox. savings of buying "blank" PCs from Dell), but we always have the ability to upgrade the OS/apps at will.

We plan on skipping Vista[0] and holding on to XP through the upcoming school year, then deploy Windows 7 on enduser desktops.

[0] Except for certain tablet laptops which only have drivers for VIsta...

If a company is an Enterprise customer, why would they not want to be covered under an enterprise or other volume licensing agreement with software assurance? If they already decided to drink the Microsoft kool-aid, they are fricking idiots for not pouring a big old glass of it and getting the most out of it. As long as you keep drinking, it's not that much more expensive and could actually be cheaper in the long run then paying "retail" during an OS version cycle. Plus

I disagree with your statement that users only care if it works. At my previous employer, the users didn't mind if it worked or not, so long as it was new and shiny. One user that requested to be moved to a new (at that time) flat panel LCD (15") rather than staying with her older CRT (21"). Another user wanted to be the only user on Windows Vista so that she could claim she was the only one with the latest OS. It didn't matter to her that the software she was using to perform her job duties was using a mod

Most people buy the software with the computer, Dell or HP preinstalls it to your specification and you're pretty much done. The hardware is chucked away well before the software, and then... well, you just buy another PC with the OS preinstalled. IIRC its cheaper to do this than it is to put a free OS on the computer. (sucks that does, but if you have a monopolistic marketplace, what did you expect? A class-action lawsuit?)

Its generally only the large enterprises that go for SA because the quantity of